by Dr Joanna Abeyie MBE
Question: How do we attract, retain and nurture diverse talent? Answer: Build an inclusive people strategy based on meaningful communication. The more you’re listening and understanding, the better you’ll get at creating inclusive processes.
You’ll learn:
• How to build meaningful engagement with diverse talent
• About taking a long-term commitment to attracting and retaining diverse talent
• How to support inclusive career progression
When we think about diverse talent, inclusivity strategies or special schemes and programmes are often seen as the way forward.
But what if we didn’t need any of this? Imagine a world where our organisations built people strategies that are so inclusive they provide the right support for everyone from the outset.
Knowing how to recruit inclusively and understand what all different types of people need in order to be successful should be a prerequisite for anyone working in HR or a talent management role.
I would like to see a cultural transformation that redefines the way that we do things from the ground up.
A transformation that makes sure that whoever you are, irrespective of your background, you’re able to get into the organisation you want to work for and when you’re there, enjoy a level playing field so you get the best out of the environment you’re in.
The art of meaningful engagement
To attract diverse talent, organisations need to hold themselves to account.
If you find you’re getting the same type of applicants, try to form relationships with talent pools that you don’t normally use. But know that this isn’t a quick fix - building real and meaningful engagement is a long-term process.
Waiting until the job vacancy comes up is too late and is the reason mistakes are repeated. There needs to be a long-term focus on engaging that diverse talent in readiness for future vacancies.
Speak to organisations or charities that work with diverse individuals and find out what you can do to support applicants now.
You need to ensure that diverse talent is looking at your organisation and can understand how to get through your recruitment process, which may have hidden barriers within it.
Consider holding careers events where those individuals come into your organisation and see what you’re doing. Try holding CV and pre-application workshops to support individuals through the process.
The more you’re listening and understanding, the better you’ll get at creating inclusive processes in the first place.
Inclusive workplace progression
Once you have those individuals in your organisation, it’s really important that development and promotion processes are transparent.
Level the playing field so that when promotions come up, they’re actually fair.
Employees should be rewarded for their work performance, not for the ability to be in the office late or go on nights out bonding with senior colleagues.
One example of best practice I recently saw and would recommend is where a company had their employee and manager sit down together to decide the employee’s objectives for the next quarter. They would then have regular check-ins and together they would be able to see if the objectives had been met.
This makes sure there isn’t any preferential treatment or bias in the way promotions are awarded.
Listening is key
When you look at the Black Lives Matter movement, there have been a lot of people who have assumed that they know what to do to help black people do better in the workplace. I actually think the only way to know is to ask them about their experiences and what makes it hard for them.
Speak to your employees and find a way for them to share their experiences confidentially. Let them know you understand what’s going on and, even if it is not your lived experience, you’d really like to contribute to it not being anybody else’s lived experience.
And it works both ways - individuals from ethnic minorities may have colleagues who, if racism is not their lived experience, may be nervous about touching on it. Just providing that space for a little bit of understanding that they might not get it right, even though they’re intending to, will help to move the conversation forward.
We’ve held a lot of open conversations about ethnicity in the workplace and something that comes up is white privilege. This term is thrown around lot and I think there’s sometimes confusion because white privilege isn’t about hardship, or taking away from the experiences of a young, white working class individual or a white wheelchair user. It’s about the fact that their skin colour probably won’t be their barrier where for a black person it is.
In saying Black Lives Matter, nobody is saying all lives don’t matter. The message is that in terms of police brutality, and far beyond that in terms of society’s structure, such as the justice system and the education system, black people are being disproportionately negatively affected.
Organisations might say we don’t hire a lot of ethnic minorities so we’re going to create a mentoring programme or a bursary. It might sound good but be aware that people would love to not have to do that - to not have to be developed or trained and go on all of these mentoring courses. They’d just like to be taken seriously for the expertise that they currently have.
People without any real understanding of what people are experiencing sit down and decide what their problems are and what they need and quite often they’re wrong.
Nurturing your talent
If you want to know how people feel, you can just ask them. The more in touch you are with people once they’re in your organisation, the more likely it is that you will be able to find a way to really help.
I am managing director of Blue Moon, which finds organisations world-class senior leadership talent using inclusive search processes and by utilising untapped and alternative talent pools.
We work closely with businesses to analyse and alter their infrastructure and environment from the ground up.
This ensures that anyone who joins the business can be the best version of themselves, therefore ensuring they can carry out the most effective work possible.
We do lots of focus groups and when we confidentially present the findings back to senior leadership teams, they sometimes don’t believe employees have had the negative experiences they report because it’s the first time they’ve heard it.
Making sure people have the chance to share their experiences freely without getting in trouble and without leaders dismissing those experiences is really important.
Dr Joanna Abeyie MBE is a multi-award-winning social impact entrepreneur and champion of diversity, inclusion and equality. Joanna runs Blue Moon, a flagship inclusive Executive Search Business and Diversity and Inclusion Consultancy Practice. Joanna was awarded an MBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours list for her services to diversity and inclusion in the creative and media industries.
Twitter: @Joanna_Abeyie
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joanna-abeyie-mbe
Web: createbluemoon.com/